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Monday, January 24, 2011

"It was actually kind of scary," says Sands, a Seattle-based clinical engineer. "Exposed wires. Equipment that looked like it was out of the 1950s — some of it held together with tape."Laura Adiele, a registered nurse on the same trip, also was shocked by conditions at the only public hospital in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, an urban area of 5 million residents."They are warm, beautiful people," said Adiele, "but their hospital is in shambles." Story after story of tragedy and loss can be traced to the lack of equipment considered basic in the United States.A 2-year-old boy, for example, died at Black Lion while undergoing a relatively straightforward hernia surgery. Cause of death: hypoxia — lack of oxygen — after a breathing tube became dislodged. No one on the surgical team noticed in time to help, though his condition might have been readily detected and corrected by equipment U.S. hospitals have used for decades. Read more..